


Bear With Me

by JulietsEmoPhase, Mercutio_Snow



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Action & Romance, Action/Adventure, Aurors, Dralentine's Day, Drarry, First Kiss, Fluff, M/M, No Smut, Post Hogwarts AU, Post-Hogwarts, Teddy Bears, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-05-26 16:39:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6247600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JulietsEmoPhase/pseuds/JulietsEmoPhase, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mercutio_Snow/pseuds/Mercutio_Snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After spending the past few years as Auror partners, Harry and Draco have surprisingly become friends.  More than that, Harry’s been trying to work up the courage over the last few months to ask Draco out on a date.  But his Valentine’s Day plans are scuppered when an incident at a Muggle funfair turns deadly, and he’s not sure if they’ll even make it out alive.</p><p>Post Hogwarts, non-epilogue compliant.  No smut.  Written for Dralentine's Day 2016.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bear Necessities

**Author's Note:**

> This is my entry for this year’s Dralentine’s Day festival on Tumblr, orchestrated by the awesome Sara/@ourloveislegendrarry. The prompts were 1) a teddy bear with a red bow tie, and 2) underwear with love hearts on. Now it’s a month later we are free to post and claim our gifts :)
> 
> Pretty much full credit for this idea and plot have to go to my bother and editor Merc (@mercutio-snow). He came up with almost everything, even the mind-blowing puns for the chapter titles, and is actually a bloody genius. I was just privileged enough to be allowed to write such a dastardly tale. This is one of my favourite things I’ve ever worked on, and that’s all down to Merc. What a legend, cheers dude xxx

   Harry should have known from the moment Natalie McDonald dropped three Galleons onto his desk that he was in serious trouble. 

   “What’s this?” he asked the PA.

   She shrugged, bouncing unruly auburn curls that would have given Hermione Granger a run for her money.  “The wager I owe you,” she said nonchalantly, perching on the other side of his desk. 

   He blinked, his blood running cold. “That was six months ago,” he said slowly.

   “I thought you’d appreciate it?” she said, picking up one of the pencils Harry kept in a pot for when quills got too irritating, and twirled it deftly between her fingers.

   “Nat,” Harry said, a warning tone creeping into his voice.  “The last time you owed me money, I had to physically wring it out of you.”

   She tapped the pencil nervously, and glanced over at the empty desk the other side of the office.  If Harry hadn’t been apprehensive before, he certainly was now.

   “I _just,”_ she said, eyes on her hand fluttering the pencil.  “Thought you might like to be paid your dues.  You know.  Before you kill me.”

   “McDonald,” Harry growled, all pretence of niceties dropped.  “You better not-”

   “I’m here to tell you Robards wants you in his office and he has a case and he’s super stressed and I’m _pretty_ certain his wife just sent him a howler,” Natalie garbled all at once.  Harry though was too horror-struck to take in all the information.  His brain had got caught on the word _case._

 _“No!”_ he whined, shoving his hands into his hair.  “No Nat, it’s four o’clock, I was so _close!_   I was really going to do it this time!”

   “I know!” she cried, genuine dismay on her face.  “Harry I know, I tried to fob it off on Nott and Boot, but he requested you two by name and…”

   She pouted as Harry dropped his head onto the desk with a loud thud.  “The universe hates me,” he bemoaned into the wood. 

   She patted his head.  “Look at this way,” said his younger colleague brightly.  “You’ll still be spending the evening together!  It just won’t be at the pub.”

   “My life is so stupid,” Harry grumbled with a few noises at the back of his throat that wouldn’t have been out of place from a disgruntled toddler.  “This is exactly like the last _seven_ times I’ve tried to do this.”

   Natalie tapped his head, causing him to look up at her apologetic grimace.  “Look, Harry,” she said frankly.  “I know your friends are probably too chicken to say this, but my debt is paid to you now.”  She nodded solemnly and pushed the three gold coins towards him.  “And, the truth is – well there are plenty of times you _could_ have asked, I think you just let excuses get in your way.”

   Harry scowled at her.  “You know I defeated Voldemort.  Several times.”

   “Yes,” she sighed.  “And yet the prospect of simple date has reduced you to the Boy Who Is Always Single.”

   Harry opened his mouth to protest, then realised he had nothing to go on.  “I’m am such a loser.”

   The appearance of a tall, blond figure suddenly hanging on the doorframe caught his immediate attention, and Natalie snapped her head around too.  “Oh good Potter,” Draco Malfoy said, a little breathless.  “You’re here.  Robards wants us in his office.”

   Harry’s shoulders slumped in defeat, and he glanced at Nat.  “I heard,” he said flatly.  “I’ll be there in just a sec.”

   Draco nodded once, his brow creased in irritation.  “Alright, well, don’t dawdle.  It’s bad enough we caught this at the end of the day, I’ve heard he’s already pissed off.”

   With that, Harry’s handsome, belligerent, oh-so-complicated Auror partner vanished from sight, and Harry whined at a frequency probably only dogs could here and smacked both his hands onto his face, pushing up his glasses and sinking deeper into his chair.  “Please kill me now.”

   “Well,” Natalie said.  “That would mean I could take my Galleons back, and no one would be any the wiser.  However, call me crazy,” she said in a martyred voice.  “But I think if you died now, you’d only come back as a ghost to pine for the next _hundred_ years after him, and _still_ not have the backbone to just bloody ask him out.”

   Harry glowered at her.  It was a good glower.  He’d been practicing.  “You’re no help,” he bit out between gritted teeth, but only because he knew she was right, and so did she. 

   “Come on,” she said cheerfully, bouncing back to her feet.  “I’ll walk you back to Robards’ office, and you can moan some more to me on the way.”

   Harry sighed.  He didn’t really want to moan, he wanted to cry. 

   He’d psyched himself up _so_ many times to finally ask Draco out, to admit that his former rival had become his present crush, but every time something like this had come up, and all his plans had been thrown out of the window.  He purposefully ignored the little voice in his head that argued that Nat was right, that if he _really_ wanted to, the excuses probably wouldn’t hold up.  But he wished, just _once,_ that he could try and behave like a proper Gryffindor and summon the courage to just do what he’d wanted to do for almost a year now, without any spanners being thrown into the works.

   The younger Gryffindor looped her arm through his as she escorted him through the corridors, along to the office that her and Harry’s boss Gawain Robards occupied as Head Auror.  “Really,” she admonished, shaking her head and shaking her curls.  “What’s the worst that could happen?”

   “You remember that time I died?” he asked.

   “Yes,” she replied calmly. 

   “Worse than that.”

   One of the reasons he liked Natalie so much was he could talk to her about things like the Battle of Hogwarts, and she remained reassuringly level-headed about it all.  They hadn’t become friends until afterwards, when she had graduated a few years after Harry and taken her current position with Robards.  But she was one of the only people that hadn’t looked at Harry like he was the saviour.  She looked at him the same way she looked at everyone: like they were adorable bunny rabbits who were a bit slow, but with her help, they would hop across the road just fine. 

   Harry wished the walk had taken longer, but in no time they were approaching the Head Auror’s door, open to reveal Draco stood in the middle of the room with his hands in his pockets, glancing back apprehensively at Harry.  Of all the people he could have been paired with out of training, Harry would never, ever have guessed he would end up with Malfoy, even if they had come to a truce after the war, what with saving each others’ lives so many times.  Plus Harry had just been _tired_ of fighting, and so their relationship had become one of cool civility.

   But someone up high (probably Robards) had decided to test that civility and have them work together in a way that simply _forced_ them to get to know one another if they didn’t want to die a sticky, grisly death out in the field.  Harry smiled back at Draco as he came and stood beside him, and reflected that it had taken no time at all to realise he’d completely misinterpreted all those years of hostility between them, and come to understand that, in fact, he was completely smitten with the obnoxious prat. 

   Not that he’d managed to do anything about that yet, and if their flustered, red faced boss was any indication, he probably wasn’t going to get to do anything about it tonight either. 

   “I just don’t understand, McDonald,” Robards huffed and puffed like he was gearing up to blow someone’s house down.  “All I said to her was that I was probably going to be working late tonight, and next thing I know _this-”_   He snatched up a smoking red envelope from his desk.  “Is _screeching_ in my ear!”

   Harry guessed that was probably the howler Mrs Robards had sent according to Natalie, and he cringed inwardly, not wanting to point out the obvious.  But luckily, that was Natalie’s job, and she was extremely good at it. 

   “Well,” she said, her face one of positive optimism despite the circumstances.  “I assume that’s because it’s Valentine’s Day, and you promised her that you wouldn’t do what you did last year.”

   “Which was?” Robards asked in a deflated tone.  For such a large man, he suddenly looked a great deal smaller.

   Natalie gave him a sympathetic smile.  “Call at four o’clock to tell her you were working late and completely forget that you have dinner reservations.”

   “I do?” he asked earnestly, pulling hopefully at his walrus moustache.

   “Indeed,” she confirmed.  “At _Le Caneton Câlins_ at eight o’clock.”

   “Oh,” said Robards, nodding.  “I must have made a mistake?” he said.

   Natalie waved him off.  “Not a problem Auror Robards, I’ll let Mrs Robards know right away with a quick note.  Maybe attached to a dozen red roses?”

   “Oh, yes,” Robards agreed cheerfully.  “Yes that sounds like a good idea.” 

   “You only have good ideas,” she assured him, then winked at Harry before exiting the office and closing the door quietly behind her.

   Harry was thankful that his boss was no longer fuming, but he feared it wouldn’t exactly help his predicament.  Robards smoothed his hands over the pinstriped waistcoat straining over his belly, and, still nodding to himself, sat back down at his desk and rearranged some papers.  “Ah,” he said, looking up as if Harry and Draco had only just appeared.  “Potter, Malfoy, so glad you could come at such short notice.  Please, pull up a chair, I’ve got a tricky one I want you taking a look at right away.”

   Draco gave him a small smile as they took their seats, but Harry could see his jaw was clamped.  He was obviously as unimpressed as Harry with this last minute case, and Harry’s stomach dropped a little thinking as to why that could be.  Did Draco already have plans that evening?

   With someone else?

   “What appears to be the problem?” he said aloud instead, trying not to distract himself with negative thoughts. 

   Robards shook his head and fished his monocle from his pocket to pinch it between his squinting eye.  “Got some funny reports coming in from Battersea Park,” he said, looking through the several sheets of parchment.  “There’s a Muggle funfair been set up there, and the place should be teaming with people.  But it’s dead, no one in sight as far as witnesses can tell, and anyone who’s tried to enter so far has suddenly remembered they’ve left oven on and headed home.”

   “Sounds like someone’s put repelling charms around the park,” Draco suggested.  Harry nodded.  Battersea wasn’t the biggest of London’s parks, far from it, and it was half made up of dense woodland and a series of small canals.  But if there was a fair set up there, on Valentine’s Day, it should have been heaving with people on dates, not to mention regular families and teenagers out for a good time. 

   “Do you want us to go check it out?”  Harry asked, his disgruntlement not exactly forgotten but his interest piqued in the light of a good case.  Robards nodded. 

   “Take care though, whatever is going on, someone has risked exposing a great deal of magic to a large area of Muggles.”  He pulled up his waistband and nodded at Harry and Draco.  “They could be desperate, volatile.”

   “Oh goody,” Draco quipped, not trying all that hard to hide his irritation, and held out his hand for Robards to give him the file.  “Well, I guess there’s no sense hanging around,” he sighed, glancing at Harry with an expression of resignation, but there was a tweak of a smile there too that Harry was glad for.  “Let’s go grab our coats.”  They were going to a Muggle area after all, robes would have looked conspicuous. 

   Harry rolled his eyes.  “We’ll be careful,” he promised Robards, and he and Draco got to their feet. 

   “Have fun on your date,” Draco said sincerely as they left, and Robards perked up again. 

   “Oh, yes, thank you m’boy!”

   Draco’s face fell as soon as they were back out in the corridor, walking so fast past Natalie’s desk that Harry only had time to give her a quick nod of the head.  “I guess that’s our evenings ruined then,” he said glumly, passing Harry the file and shoving his hands in his pockets again.  “Did you have plans?” he asked, and Harry’s stomach suddenly clenched.

   “Erm, not really,” he admitted.  But Natalie was right, he had to stop letting excuses get the better of him.  “But maybe this won’t take so long after all, the day’s not over yet?”

   Draco gave him a non-committal noise, and they walked the rest of the way to their office in silence. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Le Caneton Câlins” roughly translates from French to “The Snugly Duckling”, which is a reference to the film Tangled, for no other reason than I love that film and thought it was a funny name for a posh restaurant.


	2. Bear Hug

   Upon Robards’ recommendation, they apparated to the south-west corner of the park, the side bordered by Muggle terraced houses rather than the River Thames.  Twilight was settling and there was a chill in the air as Harry and Draco looked up at the dark and stationary rollercoaster track, just visible over the high tree tops.  Even in the dimming light it looked rickety, and Harry silently commended anyone willing to ride on such a thing without the assurance of any kind of magical reinforcement. 

   “Yeah,” said Draco slowly, scanning through the oak trees with narrowed eyes.  “Doesn’t look like there’s much going on in there.”

   A couple walked by them, muttering that they were _sure_ they’d closed all the windows, but it was best to go home and check, and Harry figured they were in the right place.  He jerked his head over the road where the metal gates sat open but uninviting to Battersea Park.  “Let’s go see what all the fuss is about.”

   They crossed the traffic and were suddenly hit but the unmistakable hum of magic.  “Tell me I didn’t leave my taps running,” Draco growled as they both pushed physically against the wards that had been set up to keep people away.  They were strong; whoever had put them up really didn’t want anyone getting inside that funfair. 

   “You didn’t,” Harry said through gritted teeth.  “We just need to get over the threshold, come on, nearly…there.”

   As soon as they reached the gates though, they hit a shield charm which needed to be dismantled.  Harry grunted and tried to ignore every instinct in him telling him to turn around and go home, to forget all about this place and make a nice cup of tea. 

   “You’re not getting rid of us that easily,” he growled, probing with his own spells to find a chink in the protective magic. 

   “Urgh,” Draco moaned, rubbing his temple with one hand and waving his wand about with the other.  “Is your brain suddenly feeling like it’s smashing against your skull.”

   “Yes,” Harry grunted as pain exploded in front of his eyes, making it very difficult to concentrate.  “Fancy doing something about that?”

   “No, I thought I’d just leave it be,” Draco snarled, and set about repelling whatever charm had given them such violent headaches whilst Harry tackled the shield.  He tried not to be stung by Draco’s attitude, or worry who the mysterious date was he was letting down (that Harry was completely convinced existed now, or why else would he be so grumpy?)

   “Almost…there…” Harry uttered, before suddenly finding the weakness he needed to exploit and tearing the spell apart.   

   They tripped over and stumbled into the park, the magic relinquishing its hold now they were through the gates.  “I can see why no one’s coming in,” Draco panted, looking back at the open gates as if he could see the charms at work. 

   Harry nodded in agreement.  “I think it’s safe to say, whoever’s in here knows what they’re doing.”

   They walked further in, the silence of the abandoned park hanging heavy over them.  There wasn’t much in the way of open field to this park, so the fair started almost immediately, and they walked past the unmanned ticket booth within a few steps.  Harry’s head turned cautiously left and right, but there was still no sign of movement other than the swaying trees.  _“Lumos,”_ he said, and Draco followed suit, bathing the amusements they were walking past in a pale blue light and deep, dark shadows.  “Why though?” he wondered out loud.  “Why try so hard to keep everyone out?”

   Draco didn’t answer other than to shake his head.  Harry, however, was soon distracted but a sudden shift in the shadows, just out of the corner of his eye. 

   _“Stupefy!”_ he shouted, hitting whoever was lurking and causing them to sprawl to the ground with a loud “Umph!” noise.

   Harry and Draco raced over to the figure in between the spinning teacup ride and the cotton candy stall, their wands raised as the man moaned and rolled on his back.

   Harry came to an abrupt halt.  “Dung?” he said incredulously.

   The man, Mundungus Fletcher, blinked in surprise and managed to half sit up.  “Harry Potter?” he croaked in a distinctly East End accent.  “Harry my boy!  Oh ain’t you a sight for sore eyes.”  He scrambled to his feet, and Harry could feel Draco’s mild confusion without even turning to look at him, so Harry explained.

   “Malfoy, this is Mundungus Fletcher, a former member of the Order of the Phoenix.”

   Draco stepped closer and arched an eyebrow over Dung’s tatty coat, gold tooth and grubby bald head.  “Right,” he said, with the appropriate amount of scepticism.  “And what, Mr Fletcher, can I ask are you doing here when everyone else is being kept out by a rather staggering amount of magic?”

   “Ah,” said Dung, raising his eyebrows.  “Well I did that, didn’t I?  Had to keep people away, only way to keep ‘em safe.”

   Harry instantly raised his wand again and darted his eyes through the darkness.  “Keep them safe from what?” he demanded. 

   Dung shifted from foot to foot.  “Erm,” he said, rubbing his hands together.  “Well, I might have got myself in a spot of bother.  I’m very glad you’re here actually Harry lad, think I may be over my head on this one.”

   Harry couldn’t see or hear anything out of the ordinary in the dimming light, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.  Dung was used to getting himself in and out of nasty scrapes.  If he was nervous, that couldn’t be a good sign. 

   “Explain Dung,” he said as Draco took a few steps away to survey the scene as well.  “And do it fast.”

   “Right,” Harry’s light-fingered acquaintance said, throwing up his gloved hands.  “Right yeah, it’s just…”

   Harry sighed impatiently.  “I’m not so bothered about the illegal parts, Dung,” he said genuinely.  “I care about the _dangerous_ parts.”

   That was all the reassurance Dung needed.  “Sure,” he said with more confidence as Draco came back to stand beside them, still giving Dung a wary look.  “Okay, so I’ve got this guy, he likes his pets, makes old Hagrid look tame in comparison.  He lives in the arse end of beyond in Australia or something, so yeah – he has some _big_ ones.”

   Harry wasn’t sure where this was going, but he nodded anyway, his eyes darting back around the lengthening shadows.  The sky was still a swirl of sapphire and violet as the sun dipped below the London skyline, but down on the ground it was feeling like night was already on top of them. 

   “So,” Dung continued, wringing his hands in the gloves that were unravelling at several points.  “This guy, he um, might have himself a dragon-”

   Harry immediately went into full alert mode.  “Mundungus _Fletcher,”_ he cried.  “Is there a _dragon_ here!”

   “No, no, _no!”_ Dung quickly yelled back, but then instantly hushed again.  “No, no dragon, what do you think I am, an idiot?”

   Harry shared a glance with Draco, and chose not to answer.

   “No,” Dung carried on, licking his lips.  “See this guy, he knows I can get certain pet supplies, from people who don’t ask questions, but this particular request was pretty specific, so I thought I’d do it myself.”  His face fell and he sighed, looking nervously around behind Harry and Draco.

   “Let me guess,” Draco drawled.  “You shouldn’t have done it yourself.”

   The sound of a drinks can rattling along the ground pierced the air, and the two Aurors spun around, wands raised and pointed in the direction the noise had come from.  Mundungus whimpered.

   From under a popcorn stall to their right, something emerged from the red and white striped cloth that hung over the counter.  Harry held his breath, wondering what it could be that had got Dung so scared…

   It was a teddy bear.  A walking teddy bear, about a foot or so high, that pushed the cloth up with a little paw and then once emerged, turned to look it’s blank face at the three men standing in the aisle between the amusements. 

   “What the-” said Harry, bewildered.  The beige teddy had a red bow tie and red writing stitched on its white tummy that said _“I WUV YOU!”_   It waddled more than walked, taking a few unsteady steps towards the trio.

   _“You’re my best friend, ya-huk!”_ the bear announced in a goofy, pre-recorded voice without moving its mouth. 

   “Dung?” Harry said, not daring to take his eyes off the bear. 

   “He wanted some toys right,” said Dung hurriedly.  “Just some teddies for this dragon to play with, keep him a bit occupied whilst he was teething.  I thought – how hard can that be?  Make them tough so they wouldn’t just rip, fire-proof, maybe even give them a spark of personality.”

   _“I want to play, ya-huk!”_ the teddy said, lifting its arms.  The voice was throaty and American, and Harry assumed the noise at the end was a sort of laugh.

   “So you made a teddy bear come to life?” he said, half thinking about immobilising the thing before it got too close.

   Mundungus gulped.  “Well,” he squeaked.  “It was just _one_ to start with.”

   The popcorn stall suddenly smashed to the ground in a furry wave of motion.  _“Stupefy!”_ Harry yelled without thinking.  _“Impedimenta!”_

   That might have stopped some of the onslaught, but there was just so many he wasn’t sure how much good it really did.  Because it appeared, as the three men realised their spells were not working and broke into a sprint, that there was a whole _battalion_ of walking teddy bears, and when they set their minds to it, they could actually move pretty bloody fast for having such little legs.

   They all looked like the first bear, in that they had the same bow-tie and the same inscription on their bellies.  But some were tiny, no bigger than the palm of your hand, others were a little smaller or taller than the first bear, and then some were as big as human children, probably up to Harry’s waist if he’d had time to check. 

   But the smaller they were, the faster they seemed to move.

   Harry was reminded of insects scrabbling and swarming as the bears clambered over each other in their eagerness to get to Harry, Draco and Dung.  “Fletcher!” Draco yelled as they shot several spells over their heads.  They didn’t seem to be doing much good though; the teddies were just bouncing around the magic, and when they were actually hit by anything, they would just pick themselves up, shake it off and then start running again.  “How did you go from one to hundreds, and why are they now trying to kill us!”

   They skidded around a corner, the Ferris wheel looming above them as they took another sharp turn between a test-your-strength stand and a coconut shy.  “They’re not trying to hurt us,” Dung cried, breathless.  “They don’t know how strong they are, they’re just trying to play!”

   They stumbled to a halt as the merry-go-round abruptly came to life beside them, music blaring and lights flashing as the colourful ponies began bobbing up and down.  Another dozen or so bears were running across the ride between the poles, and Harry snapped his head around for an alternative route. 

   _“Let’s play a game, ya-huk!”_ they called out.  _“What’s your favourite colour, ya-huk!”_

   “That way!” he shouted, darting around some large contraption that looked like it swung people upside down.  “Dung, you have to help us out here, we need more info!”

   “I needed more bears to experiment on,” Dung hissed as they slipped inside a fortune-telling booth, letting the latest wave of bears rumble past as they searched for their new human friends.  “I could have taken them home, but I needed a large open space to test some of the features, and I knew the fair was here.  So I snuck in last night, right?” he whispered, eyes darting to the tent flap and back to Harry’s face again and again.  “I came when everyone was gone.  And I got it working, I got this one bear to do it all, but then something happened, there was a flash or something, and then…”  He gulped and looked at Harry and Draco miserably.  “They all woke up.  All of them.  They were prizes in a shooting gallery, and there must have been three hundred bears all stuffed against the wall.  At first I thought I could turn them straight back, or calm them down at least, but they mobbed me!”  He pointed at his collar, where Harry now realised there was a considerable amount of dried blood.  “Broke my nose, almost strangled me,” he mumbled.  “I managed to get away, but the best I could do was chuck up the wards and keep them inside.  I was half worried I’d never get out of here.”

   “We still might not,” Draco pointed out sombrely as the shadows moved outside the tent in the light of the merry-go-round.  “Come on, we need to keep moving.”

   They slipped out the back of the fortune-telling stall, moving hastily whilst the coast was clear.

   “So,” said Harry as quietly as he could.  “You have no idea how the other bears came alive after you managed the first one?”

   Dung made a non-committal noise.  “I did an amplification spell, I wanted to make sure this thing was robust, otherwise no point giving it to a dragon, is there?”  He sighed.  “Think maybe it, I dunno, _infected_ the others from that first one.”

   “So how do we stop them?” Draco asked.  They were running next to a thick copse of trees and behind one of the larger structured attractions, probably a haunted house or something.  This was where the staff accessed the inside Harry figured, through the fire escape, rather than the guest entrance. 

   “All I’ve been able to do is blast them back,” Dung said as they slowed and ducked into the doorway.  “They’re indestructible.”

   Harry rolled his eyes.  “Good job,” he muttered in frustration.  “There must be a spell to un-animate them?”

   _“I_ think,” said Dung, wagging his finger.  “That if you could stop the original bear, the Alpha, that would stop the others too.  They’d all just go back to being cotton wool and stitching.”

   “That’s a nice theory,” said Harry.  “How certain are you?”

   Dung seemed to only be half listening.  “Oh, um, yeah,” he said.  “Pretty certain.”

   “That’s not-” Harry began, but Dung interrupted him. 

   “You boys have got this now, right?”

   Harry blinked.  “What?” demanded Draco.

   Dung shrugged skittishly.  “I’ve told you all I know, I can leave this to you now, yeah?”

   Harry spluttered, probably too loudly considering they were being hounded by killer teddy bears.  “You want to leave us here?  After the mess you’ve caused?”

   “Look, I’m sorry about that,” said Dung, having the decency to actually look reasonably sorry as he took a couple of steps back towards the wooded area.  “But you guys are the professionals.  I don’t know how to stop these things, it’s a miracle I’ve lasted this long!”

   “You dirty, rotten-” Draco growled, but Dung spun on his heels.

   “You’ll be fine!” he yelled.  “Good luck!”

   Harry charged a few paces after him.  “We don’t even know what the Alpha looks like!” he cried in a shouted whisper to his retreating back, but Dung just waved a hand over his shoulder.

   “You’ll know him when you see him!” he assured them, slipping from view amongst the foliage. 

   “We’ll know him…when…” Harry trailed off as he gave up chasing him, stopping just before the trees in disbelief. 

   “Great mate you’ve got there?” Draco said sardonically. 

   Harry turned and stomped back towards his partner.  Some Valentine’s this was turning out to be.  Bloody possessed teddy bears ruining all his chances.  “Come on,” he huffed at Draco.  “Let’s go find this Alpha and work out how to kill it.”

 


	3. Bearing Down

   They crept around the temporary structure into the heart of the fair once more.  It wasn’t just the merry-go-round that was on and being noisy now; several of the other attractions were blaring music over their crackling sound systems and whirring about in motion.  The tea-cups were spinning and the pirate boat was swinging back and forth – both of which looked sinister without any passengers riding. 

   “At least we’ll be harder to find with this commotion going on,” Harry conceded, but he had to say it was unnerving.  “Why do you think they would turn on all these rides?”

   Draco shrugged.  “Fletcher said they wanted to play,” he said.  “So maybe they’re playing.  I’m more worried as to _how_ they were able to turn them on – just how clever are these things?”

   “And how dangerous?” Harry added as they hovered by the building, which from the front proclaimed to be a _“House of Wonders!”_   It was covered in lots of psychedelic colours, and Harry was left to assume it was some sort of funhouse. 

   “Fletcher said they swarmed him,” Draco said.  “If they’re strong I guess that might be a concern if they accidently cuddle you to death, but surely a robust enough repelling charm would-”

   He broke off in the blink of an eye, slashing his wand through the air in a shower of red sparks.  It wasn’t quite fast enough though.  A bear the size of the first one they had seen dropped from the roof of the funhouse, landing on Harry as he jerked around.  _“You’re my best friend, ya-huk!”_ it cried.  Between its little paws was clutched a large kitchen knife, and it sliced through Harry’s coat and into his arm before Draco’s spell sent it flying into a nearby sweet stand.

   Harry gasped in pain, but Draco had already launched himself at him, dragging him into the light of the funhouse to see the damage.  “Harry, are you alright?” he hissed as the blood poured down his sleeve. 

   Harry shook his head.  “It’s fine,” he grunted, despite the blood.  “Just a flesh wound.”

   It was stinging, but soothed immediately once Draco fired off a quick _Episkey_ for the cut and _Reparo_ for the coat and shirt.  “Sodding hell Harry, be _careful!”_ Draco berated, rubbing his arm as if that would help.  His eyes were imploring.  “I’m not going to lose you to a psychotic stuffed toy, alright?”

   Harry was a little bit taken aback by the ferocity of his words, and if the situation had been slightly less serious (or ridiculous depending on how you looked at it) he might have allowed his heart to flutter a little.

   As it was, they barely had a second to recover before chaos descended again.

   Their warning came in the form of a bone-trembling roar, and the two Aurors took a moment to look slowly around in horror.  _“PLAY!  WITH!  ME!”_ something howled, before the sweet stand exploded into splinters, and from it emerged a teddy bear just like the others with a red bow-tie and _“I WUV YOU!”_ written on its tummy.

   Except this bear was ten foot tall, the ground trembling as it barrelled through the remnants of the stand, lollypops and fudge flying everywhere, its fur bristling as it roared again, flexing its huge teddy arms.  A hoard of minion bears scrambled through the debris in its wake, all charging towards where Harry and Draco were backing up in alarm. 

   “Oh,” said Draco pleasantly.  “Good.”

   _“RUN!”_ Harry yelled, grabbing his arm and going the only direction they had available to them.  Into the funhouse. 

   “Potter this is a dead end!” Draco cried as they sprinted through the entrance.

   Harry shook his head.  “No we can get out of one of those fire escapes and hopefully lose them…”

   His voice died in his throat though as they rounded the corner of the corridor and were met with a circular tube that he guessed they were supposed to walk through, but it was spinning at quite an alarming rate.

   “You idiot!” Draco moaned.  “Have you even ever _been_ in a funhouse before!”

   _Have you?_ Harry wanted to demand.  Funhouses didn’t seem the domain of a respectable pureblood like Malfoy, but his mind immediately jumped to Draco’s unknown date – had some handsome bloke encouraged him into a House of Wonders like this, with all its cheap thrills and dark corners to hold hands and kiss softly and-

   The huge bear roared again, snapping him from his ridiculous reverie and bringing him back to his senses.  He guessed the rest of the smaller ones were scrabbling up the steps to chase them into the House of Wonders, and he _really_ didn’t have time to get jealous over a hypothetical boyfriend.  “I got through the bloody Triwizard Tournament,” he growled, launching himself at the spinning tube.  “I can make it through some Muggle funhouse.”

   His words might have had more impact if the tunnel hadn’t upended him the moment he set foot on it, and had him sprawling on his back.

   _“Mobilicorpus!”_   Draco shouted, picking Harry up like a rag doll and flicking him to the end of the tunnel.  As soon as Harry was clear (albeit embarrassed) and on his feet, he spun and cast the same spell on Draco, but the bears were already upon him, and he brought several with him as they clung to his legs, despite his best efforts to kick them off. A couple of dozen more bears were jumping onto the rotating tunnel tube, but their lightness seemed to work in their favour as they scampered towards Harry.

   _“Let’s play a game, ya-huk!”_

_“Be my friend, ya-huk!”_

_“I don’t like you anymore, ya-huk!”_ chuckled Harry’s knife-wielding friend, momentarily getting his attention. 

   “That’s not very nice,” he shouted back as he and Draco blasted off the teddies clinging to his jeans like limpets.  _“Protego Totalum!”_ he cast, setting up a shield at the end of the tunnel, and immediately the bears started piling up against the invisible barrier.  He didn’t think it would last long though, as the toys seemed to have some extra magical punch to them that deflected spell work.  He might have been impressed with Mundungus if he wasn’t so furious. 

   They dashed around the next corner, leaving the bears to their platitudes and the roar and smashes of the big one making its way into the funhouse one way or another.  It wasn’t long before they came across more obstacles, and although Harry felt ludicrous being chased through them by _teddy bears,_ they weren’t all that bad.  He and Draco didn’t have much trouble traversing an uneven walkway, and even though it was a tight fit they made it down the cylindrical slide as well. 

   _“Point me,”_ Harry whispered to his wand, concentrating on the fire exit that they had taken refuge outside by when Dung had ditched them.  “This way,” he said, following the direction the wand was telling him, glad that for now the teddies seemed not to be right on their heels. 

   “So what do you think,” Draco began, before they both jumped out of their skins as sudden jets of cold air shot out of the floor where they were walking.  “Ahem,” Draco said, straightening his collar and trying to hide his mortification at yelping like a puppy.  Harry just laughed.

   “Think what?” he asked as they carried on through the corridor of air jets.  “That the uber-sized bear is the Alpha?”

   “Makes sense,” said Draco with a nod, and as if on cue, the beast’s roar echoed through the funhouse again.  “He’s the only one we’ve seen like that so far, and he’s actually reasonably scary.”

   “Aww,” Harry teased, grinning inappropriately back at his partner.  “Is wittle Dwaco afwaid of the mean teddy bear!”

   “Shut it Potter,” Draco grumbled. 

   “No, okay,” Harry agreed.  “I think that’s a good bet, he is the most intimidating-”

   “That’s just another way of saying scary,” Draco interrupted in a sing-song voice.  Harry ignored him. 

   “And there’s only one of him that we’ve seen so far.  Dung said we’d know the Alpha when we saw it, so-”

   The flimsy panel above their heads came crashing down with a shower of mini-bears, and although they both shot up shield charms several of the teddies were able to grab a hold of their clothes and hair.  _“I wuv you, ya-huk!”_ the one yanking at Harry’s ear-lobe squeaked.  _“Come play with me, ya-huk!”_ chirped another. 

   “These things are getting really bloody annoying!” Draco yelled, spinning and smacking at them as Harry pulled them from his body as fast as he could.  He stamped on one, but all that did was end up hurting _his_ foot and making him swear really loudly. 

   _“Deprimo!”_ he bellowed, sweeping the tiny bears up in a fierce wind and hurtling them back down the corridor.  “Come on, let’s get out of here!”

   Harry wasn’t sure the wand was taking them the most direct route, so he cast the spell again and imagined the fire escape, but this time clearly visualising him and Draco smashing directly through the walls if that’s what it took.  But the wand didn’t change its mind, so that’s the way they carried on running. 

   Their next obstacle was a pool of brightly coloured plastic balls that Harry assumed they were supposed to wade through, but he was very much over this funhouse.  “Sod that, levitate me Malfoy?”

   His partner nodded and cast the spell again, drifting Harry across to the other side.  Or at least, halfway across the other side, as at that point another panel crashed open, this time from the wall to Draco’s left, and he was faced with the knife bear and half a dozen friends, who had somehow got their paws on a selection of glass bottles.  Some of which were broken.

   _“Draco!”_ Harry yelled as he suddenly dropped into the pit, the impact flinging his wand from his hand.  “No!” he cried as he scrambled around to get his footing against the thousands of plastic balls, shoving them back to try and find his wand.  “No, no, no not now!”

   Draco was busy blasting back the bears swiping at him with their weapons.  He tried setting them on fire, vanishing them, even slicing them with the _Sectumsempra_ curse, but Dung’s endurance spells held and the magic just bounced off, narrowly missing Draco at one point.

   _“This is fun, ya-huk!”_ cried one of the ones with the bottles who were all a size down to the knife one.  _“Time to play, ya-huk!”_

   _“No time to play, ya-huk!”_ the knife one argued in the same goofy voice.  That one obviously hadn’t inherited the same chirpy personality as the others. 

   Luck, for once, was on Harry’s side as he felt his fingers brush against wood, and he snatched up his wayward wand.  _“Wingardium Leviosa!”_ he bellowed, aiming at the grumpy bear, ploughing his way back through the balls towards Draco.  _“Waddiwasi!”_   The bear and his knife launched through the air, and Draco was able to kick at the slightly smaller ones with the bottles. 

   “Go the other way!” Draco scolded at Harry.  “I’m fine, we need to get out of here!”  With an angry flick of his wand he sent Harry flying again, landing him painfully on the other side of the pool along with a dozen or so balls that bounced away noisily. 

   “Arse,” Harry mumbled.

   Draco had tried numerous spells on the bears to little effect.  He’d tried freezing them and ripping them – one of them was even dancing after a _Tarantallegra_ charm, but despite its jiggling feet it was still trying to stab at Draco’s ankles.  Harry was on his feet again and was just about to try washing them away with water (if his _Aguamenti_ would even reach that far across the ball pit) when Draco tired once last spell. 

   _“F_ _ulgu_ _rutus!”_ he yelled, striking the teddies with violent forks of lightning from his wand, and just for a moment, they all staggered to a halt in shock, rippling with electricity.

   It was all Harry needed.  _“Mobilicorpus!”_ he shouted and Draco was plucked away from the bears to woozy cries of _“I want to play, ya-huk!”_ and _“Come back here and fight like a man, ya-huk!”_  Harry landed him with slightly more grace than Draco had afforded him, and looked his partner over.  He hoped they would get a moment’s respite after Draco’s semi-successful spell, and with having the ball pit between them that the little bears would surely find harder to get through than fully grown men. 

   “You alright?” he asked.  Getting the odd thrashing was always part of the job, but Harry always hated seeing Draco hurt.  His lip was bleeding, his eye bruised and his clothes ripped in several places, so Harry aimed a few healing spells at him, but neither of them were as good as a Healer, and they were both starting to look quite banged up. 

   “I’m pissed off,” Draco said, wiping some more of the blood away from his chin.  “We need to get out of this place and find that Alpha.  I would quite like to stop fighting teddy bears right about now.” 

   “Here, here,” Harry said. 

   The wand compass took them round another corner, and Harry groaned as they were presented with a hall of mirrors.  “Are you _kidding_ me,” he snapped incredulously, but Draco tugged his sleeve.

   “Look,” he said, the first smile on his face since they’d entered Battersea Park.  He led Harry slightly further away from the mirrors, and there, at last, was their fire exit. 

   “Oh thank Godric,” he said.  “Let’s go.”

   “Hang on,” said Draco, looking back towards the mirrors.  “It’s a shame we couldn’t distract them?”  He stood thoughtfully for a moment.  “What about a doppelganger charm?  If we could leave one amongst those mirrors it might at least confuse some of them?”

   Harry grinned. “Brilliant,” he breathed.  “We probably only have time to perform the spell once, you’re always better at it, do you want to do me?”

   Belatedly, Harry thought he maybe could have phrased his request a little better.  Draco though didn’t seem to notice.  “Be my pleasure,” he said with a smile, and turned Harry around by the shoulders so they were facing each other.  A familiar gesture – they were always manhandling each other on missions, it was a necessity – but Harry still felt a bit of warmth creep up his neck. 

   The charm involved a complicated incantation and several different motions that copied the image of a thing or person.  It wasn’t like a Gemino Curse where the object was _actually_ duplicated, it just gave a reasonably solid echo of the subject, and in the case of living things, it could even walk around to a certain extent, if you were good enough.

   It was a favourite of Draco’s when they were on missions to confuse their targets, and Harry waited patiently as he performed the magic.  After a tense minute or two, another version of Harry shimmered into view, blinking expectantly at Draco who released a deep breath.  “Excellent,” he said, nodding at the duplicate.  “Go and stand in those mirrors, only a few turns in so you can still be seen.”

   The doppelganger nodded once, then walked off to do as it was told.  “Good,” Harry said.  “Creepy, but, good.”

   Him and Draco darted for the door and burst back out into the night which had properly set by now.  The lights from the rides gave them enough to see by, and the grating music and dings and whistles from the various attractions gave them a good amount cover for banging the door open and closed, and their panting as they ran across the grass. 

   “We need to find the big one,” Harry said.  “Should we set a trap, try and bait it?”

   They rounded the corner of the funhouse for the second time, and realised _finding_ the oversized bear was not going to be their problem.  It had obviously given up trying to get inside the House of Wonders after Harry and Draco, and had instead set about smashing the other rides and shops around it in frustration.  It was now sat amongst its destruction, looking disgruntled with a dozen or two tiny bears hoping about it like kittens would their mother.  The big bear growled and snarled at the little ones occasionally, but it didn’t seem like its heart was really in it. 

   “Okay,” Draco whispered as they hovered by the corner of the funhouse, peeking out so they could just keep an eye on the mega bear and its small followers.  “So you were saying about a trap?”

   Harry shook his head.  “Yeah, but, we need to think about how to stop it first, once and for all.  Nothing’s really worked so far?”

   Draco frowned.  “Well, the lightning made them stumble at least,” he said, thinking out loud, and Harry nodded.

   “It did, didn’t it?” he said, then began looking around at the attractions nearby that hadn’t been demolished.  His eyes lit on the bumper car ring, and he felt his eyebrows reach up under his hair.  “I think,” he said slowly.  “I have a plan.”

   “Am I going to like it?” asked Draco.

   “Probably not,” Harry admitted with a grin. 

   Draco sighed.  “What else is new?” he sighed.  “Come on then.” 

   They went around the debris and managed to avoid being spotted at least for the time being, and within a minute they were in the safety of the bumper car ride control booth.  “Potter,” Draco hissed.  “Why are we in here?”  

   “You been on the dodgems before?” he asked, assessing the control panel and worrying his lip between his teeth.  He was pretty certain he could make out what to do.

   Draco shook his head.  “Not a Muggle one,” he said, concentrating on looking out into the night for any bears sneaking up on them; it wouldn’t do to get caught in this small glass box unawares. 

   Harry pointed into the ring, where at least two dozen small carts sat.  They had thick rubber bands around their bases, and antenna that stretched up to reach the roof overhead.  The sides of the rink were all open, with only slim pillars keeping the ceiling up.  “You said the lightning spell stopped them, even if just for a moment?” Harry asked.  He’d seen it himself, but he just wanted to double check the facts.

   Draco nodded.  “It seemed to be the only thing I used that had even the slightest effect.”

   “So,” Harry said hurriedly.  He knew the bears wouldn’t let them be for too long, and he didn’t want to waste time on a lengthy explanation.  “These cars run on electricity.  They get their power down those poles that skim the electricity grid in the ceiling, carrying the current into the back of the cars and making them move.”  Harry was suddenly very grateful that, sometimes, Hermione lectured them on the way Muggle things worked, whether he and Ron were interested or not.  “I think we can harness that electricity, and give the bears a much bigger jolt than you did.  It might be enough to stop them, or more specifically, the Alpha, for good. 

   “And then the rest of them would die?” Draco said eagerly, a glint in his eye.

   Harry hummed, unsure.  “Die?  Deactivate?”  That sounded less sinister, they weren’t really alive after all, and even though they were obviously quite dangerous, he didn’t feel so good about planning a massacre.  A mass shutdown sounded better.  “I hope so?” he said.

   “How?”

   Harry pointed at the console.  “I reckon we can use the lightning spell through this interface, and overload the ride, electrocuting anything that’s in contact with the ring.  We’d be safe in the booth, it’s insulated.”

   Draco nodded and looked over the ring shrewdly.  “How are we going to get them onto the electric bit?”

  Harry looked over to where they’d left the mega-bear near the funhouse, and then back to the dodgem rink.  “Er, turn it on?”

   Draco sighed.  “There are lots of things on now, I don’t think they’re attracted to bright lights and noise anymore.”  He tapped his wand on his thigh, and then sighed even heavier.  “I think there’s only one thing they’re really interested in.”

   Harry frowned, then Draco’s meaning dawned on him.  “No,” he said.

   “Look,” Draco protested.  “I don’t know about Muggle stuff, you need to do that bit.”

   “No,” Harry growled.  “I was never suggesting putting you out as bait.”

   “Well,” said Draco, straightening his coat.  “I am.”

   “But,” Harry spluttered.  It had definitely not been part of his agenda for the evening to electrify his potential date.  “You’ll get hit by the surge too, it could kill you!”

   Draco shook his head.  “You give me a signal or something,” he said, remarkably calm about the whole thing.  But that was Draco, once he’d made up his mind on a matter, he was one stubborn son of a bitch.  “And I’ll Apparate away.”

   Harry chewed his lip some more.  “Are you sure?”

   “It’s the only way,” said Draco matter-of-factly.  “And we better hurry because I’m pretty certain I can see our little friends scampering in the shadows over there.”

   Harry’s gaze followed where Draco indicated, and he had to agree there was definitely movement going on there.  “Okay,” he said.  “Go, stay safe, and remember it won’t matter unless we get the giant one, so try and get him fully inside the ring.”

   “Yeah,” Draco said, rolling his eyes.  “Because I’d forgotten that in the two minutes since we came up with the plan.”  Harry made to swat his head, but Draco ducked out of the way with a grin and opened the door to the booth. 

   “Good luck,” Harry hissed. 

   “Don’t need it,” Draco hissed back petulantly, clicking the door shut again quietly, and dashing over into the rink. 

   Harry took a deep breath, then turned the key he hoped would bring the attraction to life.  His heart leaped as the machinery whirred into action, lighting up the small arena and all the cars, filling the air with eighties pop music.  _“You spin me right round baby, right round like a record baby, right round round round!”_ the male voice sang over the electro beat.

   Draco turned and looked at Harry, pointing up to the sound system in disgust.  Harry cocked his eyebrow in disbelief.  “It was the eighties,” he grumbled.  “Don’t judge.”

   Draco was quickly back on mission though, hopping into one of the little cars and casting a protection charm around it.  “Okay,” Harry murmured to himself.  “Okay, we can do this.”

 _“HEY!”_ Draco bellowed over to the Alpha and its cluster of smaller bears.  From the looks of it, a number of them had come out of the funhouse and rejoined the pack.  _“OVER HERE YOU MORONS!”_

   Harry heard the giant one roar even through the glass and almost immediately the collection of different sized bears started converging on Draco in the middle of the ring, and not just from outside the funhouse.  Little shapes started waddling and scampering over from all four sizes, arms outstretched eagerly under the swirling, brightly coloured lights of the bumper cars and the nearby attractions. 

   They were no doubt spouting off their usual lines about love and hugs and playtime _(“Ya-huk!”)_   But Harry thankfully couldn’t hear any of that over the sound of the pop song and the protection of the booth.  He could see and hear the massive bear, but it didn’t seem all that concerned about moving very fast.  _“BE!  MY!  FRIEND!”_ the beast roared, stomping slowly over to the dodgems, but the smaller ones were all getting there much quicker.

   _“I, I, I, I,”_ the song echoed, and Draco grimaced as he looked up at the speakers in disgruntlement again.  _“I get to be your friend now baby.  And I, I, I, I – would like to move in just a little bit closer. (Just a little bit closer.)”_

   “Come on, come on,” Harry muttered anxiously, his wand in his hand and hovering over the console in anticipation.  He was starting to think maybe these lyrics were a little bit too apt for him, and he irrationally hoped Draco was too appalled by the electro beat to fully pay attention to them.  He was still very unhappy about Draco putting himself out as bait, and whispered a plea to whoever was watching over them that he wouldn’t be hurt. 

   His shield was holding as the first few teddies started bouncing off the protected car, and Harry could see him reinforcing it every ten seconds or so.  But the bears weren’t giving up that easily, and as Draco had pointed out previously, were awfully quick learners. 

   _“Come play with me, ya-huk!”_ one of the child-sized ones called out, as it clumsily climbed onto one of the cars.  Of all the things these bears were, dexterous was not one of them.  But that didn’t stop this bear finally sitting itself the right way in the chair, and then pressing its fat, furry feet against the pedal.

   The dodgem rocketed forwards and slammed into Draco’s car.  He hadn’t been expecting it, and was almost vaulted from the safety of his cart and the shield charm.  “Draco!” Harry called out, but he managed to grab the pole that conducted the electricity and steady himself.  The other bears though had caught onto their fellow’s idea, and were scampering into nearby cars – even the smaller ones, who were teaming up to work the pedals and the steering wheels together. 

   _“All I know is that to me, you look like you’re lots of fun,”_ the song continued cheerfully on.  _“Open up your loving arms, watch out here I come!”_

   _“Har-ry!”_ Draco yelled out to him as he eyed up the dozen or so cars that were now starting to move around him.  _“Hurry!”_

   But Harry couldn’t do anything, he had to wait as the large bear stomped its way over the grass, its little loyal followers bouncing around at its feet as it roared into the night once more.  “Come on!” Harry couldn’t help but yell at it, but all that did was get a number of smaller bears banging on the glass windows of his small booth space.  “Hurry up you big lout!”

   The mega-bear growled and thrashed its head about, but it did finally reach the edge of the ring, stopping to sling its leg over the barrier to where Draco was fending off several rambunctious bumper cars, repeatedly slamming into him.  The knife bear watched on from the safety of the grass as the giant bear straddled the barrier, but unlike the others it came no further. 

   “Go, go, GO!” Harry urged, ignoring the knife bear now the brute was finally swinging its other leg over, getting both feet into the arena.  “DRACO!” he yelled, waving his arms.  “Get out of there!”

   Draco looked only too happy to oblige, and turned where he stood on the seat to Apparate to safety.

   Except nothing happened.

   He looked up at Harry in horror, and tried again but he remained where he stood.

   “Dung!” Harry screamed at him, suddenly realising, even though Draco probably couldn’t hear him.  “The wards must be stopping you!”

_“You spin me right round baby, right round like a record baby, right round round round!”_

   The massive bear was only a few feet away and the other cars were slamming repeatedly against each other in a big throng with Draco at the centre, and Harry had to cast a spell, any spell, _now!_

   He didn’t have any bright ideas, just really stupid ones.  So he flung the door of the booth open, smashing a couple of bears away but still immediately finding himself set upon by three others that got through.  _“Accio Draco!”_ he screeched, throwing everything he had into snatching Draco from the bumper car through the air towards him.

   Draco barely managed a look of shock as he was plucked from the bumper car and launched into the air.  The mega-bear snarled and bellowed in fury as Draco zipped past its head, turning as it did to follow him, but Harry didn’t see much more as Draco’s body slammed into him and they both crashed to the grass.  “I _told_ you that was a bad idea!” he cried at his partner, but Draco was already scrambling to his feet and blasting the small bears away from them with his lightning. 

   “No time Harry, we have to do this NOW!”

   Harry jumped up before the electrified bears at their feet regained their senses, and pointed his wand at the console just as Draco was doing.  “On three,” he said quickly, slamming the door shut to insulate them.  “One, two, _three!”_

   _“F_ _ULGU_ _RUTUS!”_ they both shouted in unison, and the entire ring lit up in a blinding ball of lightning.  Instinctively, both Aurors ducked down behind the console as the spell ran its course.  Harry tired not to feel bad as the bears screamed in unison, but if he had to choose between a hoard of killer teddies and him and Draco, he was going with him and Draco. 

   All of a sudden, the lightning dissipated and the noise stopped.  The pop song even ground to a halt, and all that was left was the faint fizzle and crack of the aftermath of their magic. 

   Harry and Draco looked at one another, before slowly rising together, surveying the damage they had caused.

   The ring was littered with slightly burnt, but most importantly very still teddy bears, and Harry felt a thrill of success rush through his chest.  “I think it worked,” he whispered, then, much louder.  “HA!  Take that you little shits!”

   His triumph lasted all of two seconds, before several bears threw themselves at the glass windows again, making Harry practically jump back into Draco’s arms.

   “What the-?” he said, feeling his face fall.

   “It didn’t work,” Draco said.  “Dung was wrong, killing the Alpha didn’t stop the others.”

   Harry sagged, too disappointed to realise he was still resting against Draco’s side, or even that Draco still had a hold of his shoulders.   “Unless,” he said, hope rekindling in him and he looked suddenly back at his partner. 

   “Unless what?”

   Harry grinned.  “Unless that _wasn’t_ the Alpha.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Fulgurutus" is the only spell I’ve made up, all the rest come from the books. It comes from "fulgur", which is Latin for lightning. The song used is “You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)” by Dead Or Alive.


	4. Unbearable

   “What are you talking about,” demanded Draco.  “Of course it was, there was only one like it, Dung said-”

   “Dung said,” Harry interrupted.  “That we’d know him when we saw him.  That he was unique.  There was only one giant bear, yeah, but there often is only one big prize at these sort of things. Aside from being big, it was pretty similar to the other bears.”

   Draco shook his head tiredly.  “So,” he said distractedly.  “How does that help us?”

   The bears slamming against the glass were drawing more near, and Harry figured he would rather high-tail it before he and Draco were any more outnumbered.  “Come on,” he said, opening the door and darting out.  “I’ll explain on the way.”

   “The way to where?”

   Harry shook his head.  “Just – away for now,” he said. 

   He gently eased the handle on the door down, and caught Draco’s eye with a nod.  He had his wand up, ready to fire, so without any further delay Harry once again threw his weight into the door and shoved away the bears clinging to the frame.  Draco then made short work of them as he fired his lightning charm several times, immobilising them enough so he and Harry could make a dash for it. 

   They ran as fast as they could under the Ferris wheel into a darker part of the park, where hardly any of the attractions had been turned on.  They soon got lost in the shadows under the iconic image of Battersea Power Station looming in the distance, the buzz of the London traffic drifting through the night air now they were far enough away from the din of the funfair songs. 

   Harry stopped them near one of the narrow canals that bordered the edge of the funfair, where the organisers had set up a _Tunnel of Love_ ride.  The lights may not have been on, but the small boats kept drifting by at regular intervals, and Harry wondered if perhaps they were on a motorised track, rather than electric seeing as they were on the water. 

   “I think we’ve lost them for now,” he said, rubbing his hand over where his arm had been cut before.  It was still stinging and aching, and he wondered briefly how Draco was feeling after being attacked both in the funhouse and on the dodgem rink.

   “That won’t matter if we can’t turn the bears back,” Draco said, spinning his wand between his fingers as he usually did when he was stressed and thinking.  “We’ll be here forever if we can’t make them just be teddies again.”

   “Right,” Harry agreed.  Something in the darkness caught his attention, but after staring in the direction he thought he’d seen it, he decided it was probably just the wind.  “I think Dung’s Alpha theory might still hold, and I reckon I might know which bear to target next.”

   Draco’s eyebrows raised hopefully.  “Okay,” he said.  “I’m listening.  It’s not like we have any other plan right now.”

   Harry grinned back at him.  “Did you notice that bear with the knife?” he asked.

   Draco looked at him shrewdly.  “I might have noticed it when it was trying its best to stab through my ankles,” he said, his sarcasm strong even by his waspish standards. 

   “Well,” Harry carried on, ignoring the barb.  “We know these things are reasonably clever, right?  That they can learn.  But I’m pretty certain that’s the only bear that’s learned new _speech.”_

   “He sounded like all the others,” Draco dismissed, but Harry shook his head.

   “Its voice sounded the same, but he was using different words – that was the one saying it didn’t like us anymore and didn’t want to play.  And,” he added.  “I’m pretty certain it was the first bear we saw, the one that lead all the others to us.  I reckon _that_ could be the Alpha.”

   Draco chewed the theory over.  “It’s worth investigating,” he said with a nod.  “Even if it doesn’t deactivate the others like we would hope, it’ll still fry another batch of them, and quite frankly, the less of them running around the better.” 

   “Maybe we should have stayed at the bumper cars,” Harry said, rubbing the back of his head and wandering a few steps as he rolled and cracked his neck.  He was going to need a long, hot bath after this.  “It was burnt out but it might have carried on conducting the lightning if we-”

   “Harry!” Draco hissed, grabbing his shoulder and pointing towards the canal.  “I think we may have a problem.”

   Harry quickly looked to where Draco was indicating, but for a moment all he could see was the series of boats bobbing along the water, about twenty feet apart.  Then he realised what was wrong with the one just about to enter the Tunnel of Love: it was not, in fact, unoccupied. 

   “Salazar!” he cried as the several teddy bears disappeared from view into the dark entrance.   The covered waterway stretched outwards from the park, heading towards the defunct power station, but more importantly away from the warded space.  “Do you think Dung put up anything to stop the bears getting _out?”_ he asked, trying not to panic. 

   Draco was shaking his head and already racing towards the next boat.  “Probably, but water has a funny way of reacting with magic, it might not work here.”

   Harry cursed again as he followed, snapping his head back and forth to check they weren’t being followed into the boat by any of their furry friends.  He’d been so caught up in trying to stop the bears, he hadn’t stopped to think whether they could _escape._   Dung’s magic had been so strong to keep everyone out, he’d just foolishly assumed the reverse to be true.  “If they get free into Battersea,” he began.

   “I know,” Draco interrupted tersely, helping Harry into the boat by grabbing his hand.  It was on a chain that fed into the inky shallows, so it still rocked as the two men settled themselves.  “We can’t have them getting loose on the public.”

   Harry felt sick at the thought of anyone coming across the possessed teddies unawares, Muggle or wizard, especially considering the most likely to be drawn to a walking, talking teddy bear would be children.  He shuddered as the boat slipped into the blackness of the tunnel.  “We have to stop this Draco,” he rasped, his eyes adjusting to the near pitch darkness. 

   “We will,” his partner promised back.  Harry knew there was no way Draco could actually guarantee their success, but hearing the confidence in his voice was enough to calm Harry’s flustered nerves just a fraction.  “We’ll get them on the other side, I just wish we could make the boat go faster without drawing atten-”

   There was a splash somewhere behind them, and Harry felt himself being yanked down.  “Wha-?”

   “Shh!” Draco whispered as they squirmed into the belly of the boat.  “We should stay out of sight,” he explained, but suddenly Harry found himself lying down and pressed up against Draco, face to face, their shallow breaths ghosting against each other’s skin. 

   He was pretty certain his brain shut down there and then.  “This isn’t quite how I envisaged us spending Valentine’s Day,” he said, before he could quite comprehend the words coming out of his mouth.

   His eyes widened in horror, and he hoped the shadows were hiding the blush blossoming across his cheeks.  But Draco didn’t seem that fazed.  “Yeah?” he asked.  “How did you see us spending it?”

   Harry’s throat clamped.  He didn’t mean _together_ obviously, Draco was asking because of that date Harry knew he had.  Right? 

   Except Harry could only think about how they were practically in an embrace, forced against each other at the bottom of a small boat in a Tunnel of Love, only the faintest moonlight shining from the retreating entrance to remind them that in the _real world_ they were just partners, just friends.  Because right now, there wasn’t much stopping Harry from reaching over and running his fingertips through Draco’s hair if he wanted, or wrapping his arm around his back to draw them tighter together, or even, if he had _really_ lost his mind, from leaning in so their lips were so close, so close…

   The lights and music came on with such aggressive force Harry couldn’t help but jerk in shock, canal water sloshing violently over the side of the boat and drenching him and Draco with as cold a dose of reality as he could hope for.  “Argh!” yelled Draco involuntarily.  A scratchy accordion started blaring over the speakers, causing Harry’s heart jump from his chest, and the voice crooned so loudly it made his ears throb.

   _“When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amoooore!”_ an overly enthusiastic Italian man wailed.  Harry realised he was sitting in Draco’s lap.

   “Sorry!” he blurted, scrambling away despite not having much room to escape, and tipping the boat again so they took on even more water and added to the substantial puddle they had accumulated. 

   “It – it’s okay,” Draco said, more thrown than Harry had ever seen him before.  He cringed.  What the _hell_ had he been thinking?

   It wasn’t just the sound system that had come to life; there were animatronic cupids suddenly waving from deep, romantic shadows cast by strategically placed pink spotlights, and beside those cracked and peeling figures now ran a stream of teddy bears, so light on their feet they couldn’t be heard over the rush of the flowing water.  Until they started jabbering again of course. 

   _“Let’s play a game, ya-huk!”_

   “Shit!” Harry cried, grabbing at his wand.  Draco had the same plan, but Harry could guess the spell on his lips before he even spoke it, lucky for the both of them.  “NO!” he shouted, smacking Draco’s hand down before he had a chance to cast.  Unfortunately, it also gave a few of the bears the chance to jump onto their boat and start thumping them with their little paws.

   “Harry,” he snarled angrily.  “Why did you-?”

   “You can’t use the lightning spell in here!” Harry yelled back, flinging the bear pulling at his hair out of the boat.  “There’s too much water, you’ll electrocute us too!”

   Draco swore vehemently.  “Sorry, yes,” he conceded.  “Then we just have to try and keep them off the boat.”

   It was easier said than done though, as there weren’t just teddies running along the bank and leaping over to them, they soon realised there were ones coming up the narrow waters behind them, riding the current on their light bodies, apparently having learned how to swim as well as their many other accomplishments.  “Get off!” Harry yelled, as one of the child sized ones tried to haul itself up into the boat, but Harry shoved it and sent it pin-wheeling backwards.  _“Bells will ring ting-a-ling-a-ling, ting-a-ling-a-ling,”_ the music continued to blare out. 

   The waters weren’t all that deep though, and the taller bear was hoping along the canal floor, propelling itself even faster as it caught up with the boat again and threw several of its littler brethren in between where Harry and Draco had stationed themselves to blast away their attackers with spells that wouldn’t backfire on them. 

   _“Be my friend, ya-huk!”_

   One of the bears ricocheted from one side of the little boat to the other, building momentum until it jumped up and smacked into Harry’s face with such force his head slammed back and smashed into the wood.  He cried out as his vision whitened, stars spiralling in front of his closed eyes, his breath catching in the back of his throat and making him cough and splutter.  _“Harry!”_ he heard Draco yell, but it sounded so far away.  In any case, he was too busy concentrating on the sensation of many soft, wet paws pushing against him. 

   He grunted and flopped around as he tried to sit up.  He could hear the zing of magic through the air as Draco cast spell after spell, but he was faltering; he needed Harry, they needed each other, Harry couldn’t let him down _now._

   He was being pressed up against the side of the boat though, bears hopping all over him chirping _“We’ll be friends FOREVER_ , _ya-huk!”_ and _“You’re my special buddy, ya-huk!”_

 _“Harry!”_ Draco yelled again as he felt himself being pushed.  _“Harry snap out of it!”_

   But the bigger bear was back.  It may not have been as massive as the mega-one they had fried on the dodgems, but it was enough that when it latched onto Harry with its sopping wet paws, it was able to drag him out of the boat and into the freezing cold water.

   The shock was enough to snap Harry out of his concussion, and he just managed to tighten his hand around his wand in time so as not to lose it again.  But he was still in the iron clad grip of the bear as it dragged him under to the cry of _“I love hugs, ha-yuk!”_

   Harry heard his name being screamed once before he was submerged under the current, the boat carrying Draco trundled away whilst the bear held Harry in place as he thrashed against his captor.  He could hold his breath for an impressive amount of time, he’d trained for many hours to do so.  But that didn’t really matter when he had inhaled half a lungful of water before being forced under, and he was already getting black spots in front of his eyes. 

   He wriggled and fought, trying to get free as he half heartedly focused on attempting some non-verbal spell to help him.  That kind of magic required extreme effort though, and Harry wasn’t able to give it whilst he was being drowned by an over enthusiastic child’s toy.  He was trying to squeeze his shoulders down from where the bear was crushing him against his body, and his glasses were pressing painfully into his face.  At least they hadn’t floated away.

   He managed to turn at just the right angle, and suddenly he was yanking himself free, shooting up to the surface and gasping and choking at the air.  _“Come play with me, ya-huk!”_ the bear protested, but Harry had had quite enough.

   _“Stupify!”_ he spluttered, which only stopped the bear advancing for a moment, but it gave him the chance to swim after Draco’s boat as fast as his shaking limbs would take him. 

   Within less than a minute he had burst out into the night air where the tunnel came to an end, and a dock had been set up so riders could disembark safely.  Harry hauled himself up out of the water and cast hasty drying and warming spells so his teeth would stop chattering long enough to let him think, his watery coughs slowly subsiding.  He was at the foot of the hulking structure of Battersea power station, and he quickly cast a _Lumos Maxima,_ flooding the dock with bright, white light. 

   “Draco?” he hissed, not seeing his partner anywhere, but acutely aware of the encroaching legion of bears from the tunnel.  It was like the pied piper of Wandsworth was calling them all through, or, Harry realised was more likely, that little bastard with the kitchen knife was telling them all where to go.  “You are going _down,”_ he growled, following the slight sounds of a kerfuffle coming to his right. 

   It was worrying him that Draco and the bears he’d been under siege from had vanished so quickly, so he broke into a run as he stuck close to the brick wall of the power station’s exterior wall.  It seemed even bigger than Harry had seen it in pictures – he had numerous Muggle rock albums he’d inherited from Sirius, and Pink Floyd’s _Animals_ was one of the many records he had stacked back at his home.  He’d always thought the power station had looked beautiful in that painting, but now, with the building very real and ominous to his right, blocking out the stars, it felt nothing but threatening. 

   He turned right towards the narrow end of the deserted structure with the towering chimney stacks – it could have been the front or the back, he had no way to tell, but what he did know was that the rusty double doors quickly approaching on his right were swinging open in the increasingly ferocious wind, and he had a feeling that’s where he needed to go.

   But just as he was about to go charging in, a voice carried over the breeze that made his stomach drop into his boots.  _“Draco!”_

   He knew that voice.

   “No, no, no,” he breathed to himself as he ran through the doors and a badly wrecked lobby until he was outside again, only to be faced with a chain link fence and a series of other mesh-metal doors before he could gain access to the vast and derelict courtyard that made up the centre of Battersea power station.  He tried to apparate but they were still obviously within the disapparation field, so instead set to work cutting through the chain-link fences. 

   _“Draco!”_ the voice cried again, but this time it was met with an answering cry.

_“Harry!  Hold on I’m coming!”_

   The interior walls of the open yard were covered almost entirely in decade old scaffolding, weeds and creepers growing up the creaking metal pipes.  Those pipes though were also crawling with bears hopping nimbly from level to level, despite the wind that was starting to batter against the building and no doubt making the scaffolding treacherous.  And in the middle of it all, at least ten feet up, was Draco, hauling himself up another level as Harry continued slashing his way through the metal chicken wire in his way. 

   “Draco I’m here!” he yelled, but it was swallowed up by the increasingly worse weather.  Besides, Draco had no reason to turn around and look at him, as he had Harry already in his sights.

   He was being fooled by his own expert handiwork, it was the only explanation Harry could think of.  Because there on the roof stood _Harry,_ or what he guessed was the doppelganger they had let lose in the mirror maze.  He was reaching down desperately to Draco, and with the limited night visibly Harry couldn’t blame him for getting confused.

   But if the bears had got clever enough to work out how to get the echo to follow them, he dreaded to think what they had waiting for Draco once he got to the top. 

   _“DRACO!”_ he screamed, but the wind was really starting to howl now and his words weren’t carrying.  He was still slashing his way through the last gate into the complex, so he stopped wasting time and fired his wand through the air.  _“Expecto Patronum!”_ he cast with such ferocity his happy memory almost didn’t stick (Draco, pressed against him, their lips close enough to touch).  But such was his familiarity with the incantation that his stag burst to life regardless, making a beeline for Draco as he swung to scramble up another layer of scaffolding.

   _“Draco!”_ the ghostly Patronus cried at him, stopping him dead in his tracks to swing his head around.  The stag blew away into nothing but wisps of smoke, but it had been enough so that he would look in Harry’s direction, finally seeing the real him as he threw his arms up.  “It’s a trap!” he yelled.  “The bears, don’t go-”

   But he should have realised, by paying attention to Harry, Draco was not paying attention to the teddies anymore.  They launched at him, catching him of balance, knocking his wand from his hand as he tipped over the edge of the bars and plummeted to the ground.

   _“NO!”_ Harry bellowed, tearing through the last of the metal gates.  _“Mobilicorp-”_

   He never saw the Alpha bear coming, but it was a little harder to ignore the kitchen knife as it drove through his shoe and his foot, cutting off one of the most important spells of his life with a scream, causing Draco to slam from the fifteen foot drop onto the cold, hard ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sorry!!! But don’t worry, this is Valentine’s Day after all! Just keep reading! Also, in case you didn’t know, the song in the Tunnel of Love was “That’s Amore”, originally sung by Dean Martin.


	5. Bear All

   On instinct, Harry seized the blade from out of his foot first, slapped the offending bear away with his other hand second, then looked up with an anguished cry third to see Draco’s still form sprawled on the grassy concrete twenty feet in front of him.  _“DRACO!”_ he screamed, unable to believe what he was seeing.  He didn’t care if he was too far away, he shot several healing spells in his direction as he tried to limp over to him, before the bears tailing him from the tunnel swarmed him and shoved him to the ground.

   _“You’re my best friend, ya-huk!”_ they exclaimed as they jumped all over him, pinning his wand hand down.  _“Let’s play a game, ya-huk!”_

_“You’re gonna die slowly, ya-huk!”_

   “YOU!” Harry thundered, flinging off as many bears as he was able, clawing his way free and electrifying as many toys as he could now his wand hand was mobile again, determined to get to the Alpha hopping around just out of his reach.  But the lightning charm just made the bears woozy, he needed another way to amplify it like they had at the bumper car ring if he was going to stop them for good. 

   There weren’t many teddies still left of the scaffolding, but that seemed like a good place to start, at least if only to disable a few more of the bastards.  _“F_ _ulgu_ _rutus!”_ he bellowed, lighting up the metal poles in a stunning criss-cross of blinding light.  The couple of dozen bears vibrated with the force of the assault, then dropped to the ground with soft thumps, their fur singed and smoking.  Harry though was already too busy fighting his way free of the bears on the ground, aiming for the other end of the courtyard. 

   There was no sense in going backwards, there would only be more bears coming from the tunnel.  He had to go forwards, to the other identical building that made up one of London’s most famous landmarks. 

   What he really wanted to do though was race over to Draco, to check he was okay and reassure his breaking heart and shredded nerves.  But there wasn’t time for that, he had to stop the bears before they got even further out into the world and endangered any more people. 

   _“You won’t escape us, ya-huk!”_ the Alpha cried in his voice just as goofy as the rest.  Even without the knife now, Harry felt he could recognise him; there was something sinister in his face that the other bumbling bears didn’t have.

   He managed to kick and shake his way free of most of the teddies, then fired an _Episkey_ healing spell at his foot.  It was only able to patch up the sliced skin and muscle though, and even then not all that well.  If he ever made it out of this, he vowed he was going to invest in some serious first aid training. 

   It was obvious there were a few broken bones grating together in his foot as he tried his hardest to outrun the smaller, faster bears behind him.  He was gasping and panting in terrible pain, but he needed to get some distance between him and the bears if he was going to lure the Alpha into any kind of trap.

   There was a severe lack of dodgem rings to hand though, and he just had to hope he could find another lot of scaffolding to trick the Alpha on to.  But, would it have learned already from Harry taking out the ones in the courtyard?  He swore as the entrance to the opposite part of the power station loomed, symmetrical to the side he had fought his way through a few moments ago.  He didn’t have time to cut through the chicken wire though, and he was still in the apparition field, so he was just going to have to risk something clumsy if he had any hope of keeping moving. 

   _“Mobilicorpus!”_  

   Human levitation on yourself was never a wise idea, especially when doing it in increasingly strong winds to jump over barbed wire fences with killer teddy bears hot on your heels.  But Harry felt himself fly up into the air with a determined grunt, and he grit his teeth in concentration to keep himself there until he cleared all three of the gates. 

   Unfortunately, his attention slipped once he was in front of the other lobby, and he dropped like a stone with only a few tufts of grass to brake his fall onto the cracked concrete slabs.  He tried to keep his weight off his injured right foot, but he was still accosted with another hideous snapping sensation as another bone or two broke, and the impact slammed through the rest of his body as he landed side on, his glasses bouncing from his face and his wand rolling from his hand. 

   He allowed himself about twenty seconds to keen in agony, before forcibly remembering that Draco had fallen from even higher than that.  He panted once or twice more, retrieved his wand and glasses, then dragged himself back up to stumble inside the building.  The wind whistled and howled as he got his bearings, glancing back to see how the bears were doing scaling the chain link fences after him. 

   Some of the smaller ones were almost at the second barrier, and Harry could make out the now distinctive shape of the Alpha leisurely following them up, knife back in hand.  _“We’re gonna get you, ya-huk!”_

   “Oh sod off,” Harry growled, and hurriedly limped his way to the left, thinking it was as good a way as any. 

   His hunch paid off, as he soon found a sign pointing upwards towards the boiler room – could that be a good place to stage an ambush?  He didn’t have any other ideas, and the quicker bears would no doubt be almost at the top of the middle fence by now, so boiler room it was. 

   The floor had once been polished marble but was now littered with the natural debris a building faced when not used for a couple of decades.  It was hell on Harry’s foot, but as soon as he reached the spiral staircase he was able to haul himself along using the banister.  The tight spiral would offer him some cover he realised, so maybe if he could find the boiler room and work out how he could use it like the console at the bumper car rink, he could come back and perhaps lead the bears upwards without them being able to attack him so easily.  The rink had been connected with the electrical antennas on the cars though, would he be able to get the boiler working and transfer the electricity?  What kind of power station was it anyway, could he…?

   His train of thought petered off as he stopped his ascension of the staircase, and stared down at the banister he was clinging to.

   The wrought iron banister. 

   Harry stepped back on his good foot, and looked down.  The whole staircase was solid metal.

   _Surely that would work?_ his overtired brain demanded.  He was certain it would (mentally he thanked Hermione again for her insisting they all know basic Muggle science).  But that was only half his problem.  How was he going to get the bears and the Alpha onto the steps without he himself getting attacked or electrocuted?

   By playing the bears at their own game, he realised, his head snapping back to look out the window into the dark night where he’d watched Draco get attacked.  Not knowing what on Earth he was doing, he pointed his wand, and cast.

   _“Accio Harry!”_ he snarled, throwing everything he had into the summoning charm.  He wasn’t sure it was even possible to summon an echo, but if he was going to manage it, by Merlin it was going to be there and then. 

   As it turned out, is _was_ possible to do just that.  Actually, it had the added bonus that by summoning something incorporeal, it could just fly right through brick and glass, and land by Harry’s side in next to no time, which was lucky, as he could already hear the faint cries of the teddy bears as they got closer, probably almost over the final fence by now.

   “Hello,” Harry’s echo said blandly to him.  Draco really had done a magnificent job, they looked absolutely identical, expect Harry had got a few more cuts and scrapes since they’d created his doppelganger in the hall of mirrors. 

   “Um, hi,” Harry said awkwardly, before remembering he was talking to a mere reflection of himself, certainly nothing alive.  “Right,” he carried on in a more professional and urgent manner.  “I need you to run down these steps and get the attention of the bears coming through the door.  Once they’ve seen you, walk back up here and wait at the top.”  He pointed to where the stairs finished a few more turns above their heads.  “Um, please, thank you,” he tacked on the end, feeling foolish but unable to stop himself.

   The doppelganger nodded once.  “Of course Harry,” it said amiably.  Without another word it turned and jogged down until it was out of sight, leaving Harry to limp his way painfully up to the top where the walkway became concrete again, and he would be safe from the lightning charm.  He felt irrationally guilty about sending the echo to face the bears, before he remembered Draco, lying cold, hurt and possibly even dead outside, and didn’t have room to worry about much else.

   _“I want to play, ya-huk!”_ the familiar chorus became audible from down below.   _“What’s your favourite colour, ya-huk!”_

   Harry didn’t care about any of those though, he was straining his ears waiting for the distinctive sound of the Alpha’s ghoulish threats. 

   Through the holes between the dark iron steps, Harry began to see some movement in the moonlit shadows.  It was hard to say for sure, but he guessed it was the nimbler bears pulling their little bodies up the first few steps and along the bars and the banisters.  “Come on, come on,” he mumbled, just like when he was helplessly watching the mega-bear lumber its way onto the bumper car rink.  At least then Draco had only been in danger, he had definitely still been alive.  Harry’s guts twisted and his gritted his teeth against the grief that threatened to envelop him. 

   Draco could still be okay, they’d been through worse together, he couldn’t jump to conclusions, certainly not when he still had a job to do. 

   _“You’re my best friend, ya-huk!”_

_“I love hugs, ya-huk!”_

_“Come and play with me, ya-huk!”_

   If Harry never heard that bloody laugh again for as long as he lived, it would be too soon.

   Saying that though, he probably wasn’t going to live that much longer at this rate anyway.  More and more bears were pilling onto the staircase, but there was still no sign of the Alpha.  The other Harry was calmly walking up the steps slowly, letting the bears bounce around his feet and harmlessly pass through him when they launched upwards and tried to get him to ‘play’.

   _“You’re no fun, ya-huk!”_

   Harry snapped to attention, but he couldn’t see if the Alpha was actually on the stairs or not yet.  Unfortunately, by poking his head over the edge of the walkway to look, the bears nearest the top spotted him and became even more excitable. 

   _“Let’s play a game, ya-huk!”_ they chirped, scrambling eagerly to try and get to the real, corporeal Harry.  Luckily, the faster ones were the smaller ones, so although Harry knew they could still do some damage, as they were lacking in sharp weapons he was confident he could hold them off for long enough. 

   That was if the Alpha bear hadn’t worked out his plan, and refused to step onto the metal stairs. 

   He just had to hope that wasn’t going to happen, and stick to the plan as it was. 

   The other Harry was still casually walking up the stairs, which by now were swarming with bears of all sizes, and Harry had to start fending off the first wave of teddies that had reached the top.  He daren’t use the lightning in case he snagged the iron and fried the ones on there too soon, before the Alpha was definitely there.  So he stuck mostly with blasting them back with a succession of _Stupefys._  

   He cried out as he stumbled and his foot flared with unbelievable pain – more and more bears reaching the walkway and joining in with the assault.  “Come ON!” he shouted in frustration.

   The doppelganger was almost at the top now, and the din of so many bears all crying out in the same voice made it practically impossible for Harry to listen out for the sound of the Alpha getting closer.  He fired spell after spell with one hand and grabbed desperately at the railing of the walkway with the other, trying to keep looking down to spot his prey despite the dozens of bears now fiercely trying their best to drag him away and play their game of “Stomp The Boy Who Lived To Death.”

   The Harry echo now stood at the top of the steps next to Harry, just like he’d been told, watching Harry passively as he bellowed and fought against the hoard.  “Oi, you!  Um, Harry!” he cried out in desperation.  “Can you see a bear about a foot tall that’s holding a knife – is it on the stairs!”

   The other Harry blinked, then walked a few steps downwards, ignorant as Harry thrashed and smacked against the bears, tears slipping unbidden down his face from pain and desperation.

   “Yes,” the echo said helpfully from just out of sight.  “I can see that bear Harry.”

   He didn’t have time to question if he was definitely on the metal, or verify it was definitely the same bear and not another one that had decided to pick up the Alpha’s knife, he just had to go for it.

   _“F_ _ULGU_ _RUTUS!”_ he howled with all his might, lighting up the spiral staircase with Godric knows who many volts of electricity that blinded him with its ferocity. 

   Much like with the bumper car ring, the sound of the bears screaming was almost too much to stand, but Harry was more concerned with flinging off the teddies still clinging to him, and covering his eyes with his arm to protect him from the light.

   As soon as it had started, the spell abruptly stopped, leaving Harry alone with the hiss and hum of magic and electricity, the odd spark flaring along the banister below him.   Cautiously, panting and dripping with sweat, he limped forward to chance a look down the stairs to see what had become of the legion of teddy bears.

   They were all charred and lifeless, and with a thrill Harry turned to confirm that the bears who had been trying to pull him down the walkway were equally now flopped on the floor, no more alive that Harry’s blood soaked shoe.  These ones weren’t charred like the ones he’d actually struck with lightning, and he prodded the nearest one with his wand tip to check it was definitely not going to get back up again.

   Nothing. 

   He let out a noise of relief that he wasn’t sure was a laugh or a sob, but whichever it was it was certainly raw and exhausted.  It was over. 

   Now all he cared about was getting back to Draco.

   Without further delay he began limping down the steps, swiping and kicking the crunchy bears out of his way as they littered almost every step back down.  Halfway back to the ground he came across his doppelganger standing over a bear with a large kitchen knife discarded beside it.

   The bear twitched.

   Without pause Harry seized the bear and flung it into the air.  _“F_ _ulgu_ _rutus!”_ Harry cried, not willing to take any chances and zapping the bear an extra time, just to be sure he was really nothing more than fluff and cotton again.  The lightning finished, and the teddy dropped to the ground below where Harry stood for a good few minutes watching to make sure it wasn’t going to move again. 

   Eventually satisfied, he turned to the other Harry, who was now looking considerably better than himself.  “Thank you,” he breathed, knowing full well he was thanking a trick of light, but he did it anyway.  The echo nodded once, and Harry ended the spell, watching himself vanish into thin air. 

   He got a great deal of satisfaction stomping on and shoving away the remaining bears scattered all along his route back, even though his foot screamed at him every time he did.  Once back out into the night, he let the wind buffer him as he tackled the chain-link fences, cooling his damp body and clothes and making him shiver.  All he could think of was Draco though, and as soon as the last fence yielded to him, he limped as fast as he could across the courtyard, Draco’s form growing as he got closer and closer. 

   “Please,” Harry prayed under his breath.  “Please, please, _please.”_

   As he drew near he collapsed beside Draco, immediately assessing him for damage and casting a _Rennervate._   His heart almost stopped with joy as Draco’s eyes flew open and he gasped in a panicked lungful of air, grabbing at Harry who was hovering above him.

   “Draco!” Harry cried, seizing him into hug, before quickly drawing back and racking his eyes over him.  “Are you okay, tell me what hurts?”

   Draco winced and tried to slow his breathing down.  “My head,” he admitted, rubbing it.  “I must have hit it.”

   “You hit _everything,_ ” Harry argued, running his hands over Draco’s clothes, trying to assess how badly he was hurt.  “I thought you were _dead.”_

   Draco though, grinned.  “I managed a cushion charm just as I fell,” he said, and relief swelled through Harry like a balloon.  “It wasn’t complete, but I think it caught most of me.”

   Harry picked Draco’s wand up from where it had landed, and held it out for him to take.  “You are extremely lucky,” he said.

   “Nah,” said Draco, taking it and shaking his head with a chuckle.  “I told you, I don’t need luck.”

   Harry felt utterly drained, unable to move or even tear his eyes from where they were locked with Draco’s, both of them smiling faintly.  Until Draco snapped back to his senses. 

   “The bears!”

   “Gone,” Harry assured him, resting his hand on his shoulder before he could try and get up.  “The knife bear _was_ the Alpha, and Dung was right.  I scorched it and the others on a metal staircase with your lightning charm, and now they’re all just teddies again.”

   Draco sagged in relief, and he laughed, much like Harry had done before with a hint of a sob.  “Oh Potter, what would I do without you, you magnificent prat?”

   Harry wasn’t sure how to answer that, so he just smiled warmly, still basking in the knowledge that Draco was alive, and actually probably in better shape than he was.

   He was about to suggest they get up and out of the wards, so they could apparate to St Mungo’s hospital, when something caught his eye.  “Draco,” he said, too tired to figure out if this was a bad idea or not.  “Um, what are you wearing?”

   He pointed to where Draco’s shirt had been yanked up from the fall, and his boxer shorts had ridden up from under his jeans.  His boxers that apparently had little love hearts all over them.

  “Oh,” Draco said, turning a magnificent shade of pink, even in the weak light being cast by the moon and Harry’s wand.  “Um, that.”

   Harry burst out laughing, he couldn’t help it.  “Draco _Malfoy!”_ he admonished in delight.  “I never thought I’d see the day when you’d be caught wearing _novelty underwear!”_

   “Oh shut up,” grumbled Draco, but there wasn’t any real rancour to it.  “It is _Valentine’s Day_ after all.”

   That sobered Harry up, and he stopped laughing with a cough to clear his throat.  “Right,” he said awkwardly.  “So, um, who were you hoping would see them?”

   He had no idea why he asked, he didn’t want to know.  In fact, he was pretty sure the answer was going to kill him where the bears had failed, but he managed to school his face into something reasonably neutral as he waited for Draco to respond.

   But he didn’t reply right away.  Instead, he chewed his lip and stared at Harry for what must have been a full minute, until Harry started to get really worried.  “Well, I wasn’t actually sure they’d get seen,” he said eventually.  “They were more for luck.  I didn’t know if the person would even want to go out with me.”

   Harry blinked, hurt by the idea of Draco getting rejected, even if that meant breaking Harry’s heart.  “Why not,” he blurted out.  “You’re great, taste in holiday underwear aside, you’re, well…great.”

   They sat there for another moment, looking at each other, the wind ruffling their hair as Harry felt maybe he’d really put his foot in it.  Until Draco took a long, slow breath, and placed his hand on Harry’s knee.  “Because it’s you.  I wanted to ask _you_ out.”

   It was Harry’s turn to stare for a full minute as his brain tried to process what Draco had just said.  “You…wanted me to be your Valentine?” he rasped, his voice barely able to escape his throat it was so choked. 

   Draco nodded.  

   Harry burst into his second fit of laughter.

   “It’s not that funny Potter,” Draco said, his voice small, but Harry couldn’t quite regain control of his senses quick enough, so he flung his arms around Draco in a bone crunching hug. 

   “No, you arse!” he cried, trying to catch his breath.  “It’s funny because _I’ve_ been trying to ask _you_ out for the better part of the year!  I wanted you to be _my_ Valentine!”

   Draco snapped his body back and stared at Harry with incredulity.  “You’re serious?”

   “Deadly serious,” Harry told him weakly, his hysteria tapering down to the odd chuckle as he wiped his eyes under his glasses.  “Draco I think you’re brilliant, please let me take you and your ridiculous boxers out for a drink.”

   Draco grinned in an unguarded way that Harry had only glimpsed a few times in his life.  “You’re an idiot,” he said fondly, cupping Harry’s face gently with the palm of his hand.  “And I’m pretty sure your foot is broken.”

   “Oh so broken,” Harry agreed. 

   Draco sighed happily, and Harry leaned into his hand, his own fingers stroking softly against the denim fabric on Draco’s thigh.  “We probably need to pop to St Mungo’s then, and let Robards know you stopped the bears.”

   Harry was disappointed, but he knew Draco was right.  “Yeah, I suppose,” he agreed.

   “But then,” Draco said.  “You could tell me all about how you did it?”  He bit his lip coyly.  “Over dinner?”

   This had certainly not been how Harry had envisioned this day going.  He would never in a million years have thought that a last minute assignment, killer teddy bears and a near death experience would have lead to one of the best days of his life, but it turned out it did.  “It’s a date,” he murmured, leaning in to finally kiss Draco on the lips.

   Best.  Valentine’s.  Ever. 

 

 

The End

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, please review! To discover more of my writing, visit www.helenjuliet.com


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